wave to mp3 to cd, or wave to cd?

S

Skycries57

New member
I understand that wave is the best to go on final to cd, but one song of mine in wave form is 110mb! So in reality I can only fit 6 songs on a cd?

How do the amature/pros record multiple QUALITY wave-like to cd's without losing storage space? thankyou
 
Ok, you definitely do not want to go wave to mp3 to cd.

I'm hoping that when you say one of your songs is 110mb, that's the whole project folder, all the individual tracks for the song. What you need to do is mix your song down to a 2-track stereo wave. This will end up being much smaller than your total project. I use Cubase, and the way to do it is to go to "Export" and then "Audio Mixdown" and then follow the options from there. It should be something similar in the program you have.

Once you have the 2-track stereo mixdown, you burn that to cd. You should be able to fit 70 minutes of music, or however many minutes the CDs you have will hold, onto a disc. If your songs are each like 10 minutes long, then yeah you'll only get about 6 of them on there. Hope this helps.
 
a cd is always wave audio, regardless of what it was before you put in on the CD (mp3, wma, real audio or whatever). The program you use for buring first decodes/decrypts all the audio files and then burns them. Turning a wave into an mp3 will only decrease the quality, not the size, since it will be turned back into a wave once you burn it anyway.
 
the size does not matter when burning audio anyway, only the time that the audio takes up. it could be a 1 gig file and only be five minutes and you'd still have about 75 minutes left - hypothetically speaking.
 
Halion said:
a cd is always wave audio, regardless of what it was before you put in on the CD (mp3, wma, real audio or whatever). The program you use for buring first decodes/decrypts all the audio files and then burns them. Turning a wave into an mp3 will only decrease the quality, not the size, since it will be turned back into a wave once you burn it anyway.
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Actually music CDs contain .cd files and not .wav files like most people would think. That is why when you import a CD (track off an album) into Wavelab you have to convert it to a .wav file and then save it in your hard drive rather than just being able to open it from the CD. :p
 
mmmm, Size DOES matter, because when you convert the audio to 44.1khz, 16-bit (for an audio CD), size is directly proportional to the length of the song (to the tune of approx. 10MB a minute). SO... if you have a 5 minute song to burn to a CD which takes up 1GB on your HDD, something is very wrong!

Also, someone mentioned on here that CDs contain .cd files, and not wave files, that's not really the case. The audio data (the actual bits) on a CD is EXACTLY the same as wav data. The headers might be a different (as well as the audio CD having a TOC) though. There aren't actual .cda files on your CD. When Windows sees an audio CD, it looks to the TOC, and makes it appear that there's a file for each track (in .cda format), but that's not really the case. If it was, you could just copy that .cda file to your HD, and have the track exist there. But the cda file is really just a pointer to the wav data (notice how small each cda file is?) So when you rip a CD to your HD, you're not really converting the data, just the format of the data (from the format on a red-book CD to a Windows .wav file)

grn said:
the size does not matter when burning audio anyway, only the time that the audio takes up. it could be a 1 gig file and only be five minutes and you'd still have about 75 minutes left - hypothetically speaking.
Click to expand...
 
Audio is not like graphics in the way that graphics (or compressed video for that matter) can have different file sizes even though the dimentions are the same (because of the ability to lossless compress some stuff greatly). I know of only one lossless audio compression method called Sfark or something, and the compression factor is tiny. On a cd, exactly the same duration, means exactly the same size.

On a side note: while graphics can often have the same value for alot of different pixels (comparable with samples in audio), that is hardly ever the case with audio. Even complete silence is not complete silence, because somewhere down the line there is noise (very, very little noise, but noise none the less), causing every value to be different.
 
many cd players will now play............

Skycries57 said:
I understand that wave is the best to go on final to cd, but one song of mine in wave form is 110mb! So in reality I can only fit 6 songs on a cd?

How do the amature/pros record multiple QUALITY wave-like to cd's without losing storage space? thankyou
Click to expand...


mp3's and wave files written to a data formatted cd. If you want it to play on all cd players, it should (should) be written to the red book standard.

mp3 is a lossy compression. that means that if you compress down to mp3 to save space, some of the data is thrown out. some people say high bitrate mp3 compression sounds just as good as .wav files. most serious audio folks laugh at that idea. you would not want to archive your files in any other fomat than that in which they were created.

you might want to put a bunch of your songs onto a cd in mp3 format to hand around to friends for comments and casual enjoyment.
 
pkzip is lossless compression for everything.........

Halion said:
Audio is not like graphics in the way that graphics (or compressed video for that matter) can have different file sizes even though the dimentions are the same (because of the ability to lossless compress some stuff greatly). I know of only one lossless audio compression method called Sfark or something, and the compression factor is tiny. On a cd, exactly the same duration, means exactly the same size.

On a side note: while graphics can often have the same value for alot of different pixels (comparable with samples in audio), that is hardly ever the case with audio. Even complete silence is not complete silence, because somewhere down the line there is noise (very, very little noise, but noise none the less), causing every value to be different.
Click to expand...


most lossless compression looks at datastreams, it does look at audio samples, per se. it looks at streams of ones and zeros. it does not 'know' it is audio data. if it sees several zeros or ones in a row, or other patterns it recognizes, it substitutes a shorter code for what is there.

you, (well, me anyway) can often compress almost any data up to 50 per cent(that's half the space)

I do not ever archive really important stuff in a zip file, cause if you have read problems, many of the diskfixer and sector editor programs have a very hard time recovering it.


mp3 can compress data by a factor of 10, or a 100. you can specify the bitrate when you compress.

all data on a hard disk is to some extent encoded. when they went from mfm to rll (run length limited) they gained 50 percent in capacity with the same hardware, different electronics. somewhere around 15 or twenty years ago, from the seagate st-225 to st-238. 20 to 30 meg (yes, I said meg, not gig)
 
Correct if you're talking about compressed graphics (jpgs and gifs), but there are graphics formats that are NOT compressed (just like .wav files!) such that each pixel takes up 12-bits (or 16-bits). RAW formats directly from high-end digital SLR cameras are not compressed, as are bmps and tiff formats (among others), so don't make a blanket statement that "Audio is not like graphics"

Halion said:
Audio is not like graphics in the way that graphics (or compressed video for that matter) can have different file sizes even though the dimentions are the same (because of the ability to lossless compress some stuff greatly). I know of only one lossless audio compression method called Sfark or something, and the compression factor is tiny. On a cd, exactly the same duration, means exactly the same size.

On a side note: while graphics can often have the same value for alot of different pixels (comparable with samples in audio), that is hardly ever the case with audio. Even complete silence is not complete silence, because somewhere down the line there is noise (very, very little noise, but noise none the less), causing every value to be different.
Click to expand...
 
I know, I didn't mean all graphics. But these days, the compressed formats are much more used. I'm not trying to do a 1 : 1 comparison, audio and graphics are a completely different format. But for a computer minded person that is used to working with almost only compressed formats, I thought it might help to understand how audio formats work.
 
Rstiltskin said:
mp3's and wave files written to a data formatted cd. If you want it to play on all cd players, it should (should) be written to the red book standard.

mp3 is a lossy compression. that means that if you compress down to mp3 to save space, some of the data is thrown out. some people say high bitrate mp3 compression sounds just as good as .wav files. most serious audio folks laugh at that idea. you would not want to archive your files in any other fomat than that in which they were created.

you might want to put a bunch of your songs onto a cd in mp3 format to hand around to friends for comments and casual enjoyment.
Click to expand...
If people are writing to CD's in MP3 format to save money, then $15 for 50 bargain disc's, would be finding a buck for a coffee too expensive, they would rather spend a quarter for two sips.

Since CD's are THAT CHEAP, WAV is the format intended for a CD.
WAV recordings are the record industry standard, regardless of specs of MP3's and 24 bit audio etc

If you are importing audio from another source, i.e. vinyl collection, tapes, record to WAV.
As mentioned in above quote, WAV is complete, not chopped, or compressed to squeeze the most music in the least amount of space. It is degragated.
 
I feel it basically breaks down into loss-ey and loss-less

Halion said:
I know, I didn't mean all graphics. But these days, the compressed formats are much more used. I'm not trying to do a 1 : 1 comparison, audio and graphics are a completely different format. But for a computer minded person that is used to working with almost only compressed formats, I thought it might help to understand how audio formats work.
Click to expand...


the best you get with most lossless compression is about 3 to 1.

with loss-ey compression it seems like the sky is the limit, these days. MP3, MPEG2, and MPEG4 (wavelet) have revolutionized the entertainment field (along with microprocessors, which are an absolut must for this revolution to function).

with all the choices, I try to archive in the orginal format, then pick the most appropriate compression for the target audience. I have been very impressed with the package 'genuine fractals' for digital imaging. it actually seems to 'add' information (not literally possible) to enable bigger enlargements.

with faster processors and better algoithms, pretty soon we will be able to compress the bible down to one bit. (its a joke, ok?)
 
gordone said:
mmmm, Size DOES matter, because when you convert the audio to 44.1khz, 16-bit (for an audio CD), size is directly proportional to the length of the song (to the tune of approx. 10MB a minute). SO... if you have a 5 minute song to burn to a CD which takes up 1GB on your HDD, something is very wrong!

Also, someone mentioned on here that CDs contain .cd files, and not wave files, that's not really the case. The audio data (the actual bits) on a CD is EXACTLY the same as wav data. The headers might be a different (as well as the audio CD having a TOC) though. There aren't actual .cda files on your CD. When Windows sees an audio CD, it looks to the TOC, and makes it appear that there's a file for each track (in .cda format), but that's not really the case. If it was, you could just copy that .cda file to your HD, and have the track exist there. But the cda file is really just a pointer to the wav data (notice how small each cda file is?) So when you rip a CD to your HD, you're not really converting the data, just the format of the data (from the format on a red-book CD to a Windows .wav file)
Click to expand...

True.
.CDA files are not, strictly speaking, a file at all. Taken more accurately they are like Microsoft's shortcut files in that they point to information rather than containing it themselves. In the case of a shortcut, this means a pointer to a file somewhere on your computer, a .CDA file serves the same purpose for an audio CD and simply points to the track and sector on a disc where a song begins.

When you browse an audio CD using Windows, you'll notice that it appears to contain a directory of .CDA files and double-clicking on any given file will play the relevant track. Copy the file to your hard disc and then remove the CD, however, and it's a different story. At best, the player will report that the relevant CD is not present; at worst it will play from the same point on whatever CD happens to be in the drive at the time.
 
gordone said:
mmmm, Size DOES matter, because when you convert the audio to 44.1khz, 16-bit (for an audio CD), size is directly proportional to the length of the song (to the tune of approx. 10MB a minute). SO... if you have a 5 minute song to burn to a CD which takes up 1GB on your HDD, something is very wrong!
Click to expand...
He could be meaning that the 1GB is the whole song in its single multiple tracks with session files, wave edits etc. Still quite alot, but possible all the same.
 
Bitrate = number of 1's and 0's processed per second (the higher, the more detail)

Samplerate = Frequency bandwidth (will always be double the highest allowed frequency i.e. highest frequency possible in cd audio is 22050hz - pretty much higher than the human ear can detect) human ear stops somewhere around 16k-22k

Bit depth = "detail of digital sound "one - cd=16bit and uncompressed dvdaudio = 24bit)

"cd audio" bitrate would be 1411.2kbps (that is 44100 (sampling frequency) X 2 (stereo) X 16 (bits)) - divide this by 11 and u get 128kbps

basically you can have wav files at different bitrates, 32bit floating point 32bit 24bit 16bit etc.. also you can change the sample rate on wavs.
however most or all are higher quality than a cd.

128k mp3 files are "said to be" CD quality, so you shouldnt be losing much if you encode higher than that...

however your always better off using wav, or something like monkeyaudio ape files to save your work. ape files are compressed wavs, that you can uncompress back to the orig size. also some can be played in winamp or such. I would consider this much less lossless, however you will need a big hdd.

cds hold 74 minutes of audio, and I think there are 80 min cds as well... it doesnt change by the size of the file your burning if your burning a "audio cd" of course if you have mp3 player that plays mp3 cds, and you have 1100 origional songs you can store them all on one cd, but if find yourself in that position, your either rich or crazy so....

just a note, vcds also will hold 74 minutes of VIDEO.... on the same type of cd... cool huh.... defies gravity!!

FatesWebb
 
also, just fyi, you can overburn cds. the "80 minutes 700M" thing is just saying that the cd will hold at LEAST that much. a lot of the time you can get up to 95 minutes of audio onto a cd before it runs out of surface space to write onto.
 
EleKtriKaz said:
Ok, you definitely do not want to go wave to mp3 to cd.

..... What you need to do is mix your song down to a 2-track stereo wave. This will end up being much smaller than your total project. I use Cubase, and the way to do it is to go to "Export" and then "Audio Mixdown" and then follow the options from there. It should be something similar in the program you have.

Once you have the 2-track stereo mixdown, you burn that to cd..... .
Click to expand...

im kind of back tracking to the begining of the thread here but i want to make sure i understand. after i record all my tracks and mis them all, get my effects all set etc., i need to mix it all down to two tracks. i use cubasis vst, which i think might be somewhat on the same line to cubase, but the only option i've found was to simply export all audio tracks to a wav. file. is that the same thing or am i missing a step here by not mixing down to the stereo tracks first.

also, my sound card has 24 bit capabilities but when making a cd are you supposed to export to 24bit or 16bit? when i tried to export to 24 bit i couldnt get the .wav file to play at all. it only plays when i export to 16 bit. whats the deal with that?
 
delah said:
im kind of back tracking to the begining of the thread here but i want to make sure i understand. after i record all my tracks and mis them all, get my effects all set etc., i need to mix it all down to two tracks. i use cubasis vst, which i think might be somewhat on the same line to cubase, but the only option i've found was to simply export all audio tracks to a wav. file. is that the same thing or am i missing a step here by not mixing down to the stereo tracks first.

also, my sound card has 24 bit capabilities but when making a cd are you supposed to export to 24bit or 16bit? when i tried to export to 24 bit i couldnt get the .wav file to play at all. it only plays when i export to 16 bit. whats the deal with that?
Click to expand...
When it exports to wav, are you getting a single wav file or several wav files? It should be downmixing all of the channels to stereo as it exports.

If you're working with CD's then export to 16 bit. There's no reason to export to 24, because CD audio is 16 bit. If your soundcard is a Sound Blaster, then although it says it supports 24 bit, it may not really do it. Creative got into a nice lawsuit over that one.
 
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